CHAPTER XVI

Forbes was prompt at the Opera. Though it was barely half past seven, he

found the foyer already swarming with a bustling mob of women swaddled

in opera-cloaks, and prosperous-looking men overcoated and mufflered.

Everybody was making haste. Dinners had been gulped or skimped, and

there was evident desire not to miss a note.

Forbes knew nothing of the music except a vague echo of the ridicule on

which Wagner had ridden to the clouds. He was just as ignorant of the

poem, and though he bought a libretto from an unpromising vocalist in

the lobby, he had time only to skim the argument, and to learn with

surprise that Isolde was Irish, and her royal husband, Mark, a

Cornishman.

The head usher directed him up a brief flight of steps, and another

attendant unlocked a door marked with the name-plate of Lindsley Tait.

From the little anteroom where he hung up his hat and coat, Forbes saw

as through a telescope the vast curtain and the tremendous golden arch

of the proscenium; at its foot a pygmy orchestra settling into tune and

making oddly pleasant discords.

When Forbes stepped to the edge of the box, he seemed to be the entire

audience, another mad King of Bavaria come to witness a performance in

solitude. The famous red horseshoe stretched its length a hundred yards

or more on either side of him. In each of its little scallops a family

of empty chairs sat facing the stage in solemn silliness. The owners

were still filling chairs at dinner-tables.

But when Forbes took the next step forward he found a multitude. Above

him he saw other horseshoes in tiers dense with faces peering downward.

Below him a plain of Babel inhabited by the tops of heads, numberless

pates in long windrows, the men's skulls close-cropped or bald, and

their shoulders black; the women's elaborately coiffed, over an enormous

acreage of bared shoulders and busts.

Suddenly all the white-gloved hands fluttered in coveys with the show

and sound of innumerable agitated pigeons. Toscanini was picking his way

through the orchestra to the desk.

From the opening phrase of the Vorspiel Forbes became a Wagnerian. Those

first stifled moans of almost sullen desire so whelmed him that he

wondered how Persis and Mrs. Neff and her guests should dare to be late

and lose this precious expression. Before the opera had finished

breaking his heart on its eternal wheel of anguish, he wondered that any

one should care to submit to its intolerable beauty a second time.

Yet here were thousands thronging to its destroying blaze like fanatic

moths--moths that paid a high price to be admitted to the lamp, and

clamored to be consumed in its divine distress.

Forbes smiled at the universal lust for artistic and vicarious suffering

that has made other people's pathos the most lucrative of all forms of

entertainment.

The time was to come when he himself would pay dearly for the privilege

of great pain; when his mind would strive futilely to dissuade his heart

from clenching upon the thorn that made it bleed. Humanity has almost

always preferred strong emotions at any cost, to peace however cheap.

The prelude was one long stream of bitter-sweet honey, and it affected

Forbes as music had never affected him. He wondered how people could

ever have ridiculed or resisted this man Wagner. He wished that Persis

would come soon. He thought of her as "Persis"--or "Isolde"; he could

not think of her as Miss Cabot to this music.

The first act was ended and the long intermission almost over before she

arrived, with Enslee, followed immediately by Bob and Winifred, and last

of all by the hostess, Mrs. Neff.

Everybody greeted Forbes with the casual informality of old friendship,

except Willie Enslee, who nodded obliquely, and murmured:

"H' are yu, Mr. Ward."

Nobody corrected him, least of all Forbes, who was too much disgusted

with Willie's existence there to feel any minor resentment. The three

women fell to wrangling, altruistically, of course, over the two front

seats. Mrs. Neff was trying to bully Persis and Winifred into occupying

them. Winifred's demurrer was violent:

"If I sit there nobody can see the stage. You're such a little wisp I

can see round you or through you."

Persis preferred almost anything to a disturbance, and her protest was a

mere form.

Only the rising curtain brought the battle to a close. Persis dropped

into a chair on the right. Winifred pushed Mrs. Neff into the other, and

sat back of her. Willie annexed the chair behind Persis, Bob Fleming

took that aft of Winifred, and motioned Forbes to the center chair. Then

Mrs. Neff beckoned him to hunch forward into the narrow space between

her and Persis.

All along the horseshoe people were just arriving or returning from

visits among the boxes. There was much chatter. The orchestra might as

well have been wasting its sweetness on a crowded restaurant.

Forbes pretended to be looking over the audience on his right, but he

was looking at Persis. The music of the garden where Isolde awaited her

Tristan, and the far-off rumorous hunting-horns of the King, her

husband, were working a magic upon her. He could see its influence on

her face.

She wore brighter raiment than at the theater; her head-dress was more

imperious, and more jewelry glittered about her. When she breathed or

moved the diamonds at her ears, her throat, and in her corsage flashed

and dulled as if they had eyelids; the pearls had a veiled radiance.

She was a combination of beauty unadorned and most adorned. Despite her

trappings of gem and fabric, even more of her was candidly presented

than at the theater last night--or was it not a year ago? Surely he must

have known her for more than a day.

Her bodice would have seemed to be shamelessly low, had it not been as

high as almost any other there. This was one of those common yet amazing

sessions where thousands of women of every age and class agree to

display as much of their skins as the police will allow, and far more

than their husbands and fathers approve.

But Forbes had not yet reached the stage where a man resents the

publication of his charmer's charms. He was still hardly more than a

fascinated student of Persis. He found her a most engrossing text.

She was so thoroughly alive--terribly alive all over! Wordsworth's

phrase would have suited Forbes' understanding of her: she "felt her

life in every limb." Her brows now moved sinuously, and now relaxed as

Isolde sang of her longing and quenched the torch for a signal to her

lover. One moment Persis' eyelids throbbed with excitement; the next

they fell and tightened across her eyes. Accesses of emotion swelled her

nostrils and made her lips waver together. Her throat arched and flexed

and was restless; and her lovely disparted bosom filled and waned.

If she sat with clasped hands, the fingers seemed to convene and

commune. She was incessantly thrusting back her hair and stroking her

temples, or her forearms. Her knees were always exchanging places one

above the other; her feet crossed, uncrossed, and seemed unable to

settle upon precedence.

If she had been a child she would have been called fidgety, but all her

motions were discreet and luxurious. She was like a lotos-eater stirring

in sleep and just about to open her eyes.

The second act of the opera proved to be hardly more than a prolonged

duet. The rapture of it outlasted Forbes' endurance; it did not bore

him, it wore him out. He grew weary of eavesdropping on these two. He

was jealous to love and be loved on his own account.

The woman next him was becoming more beautiful every moment. He felt a

craving to touch her--with reverence; to link arms in comradeship, and

to clench hands with her when the music stormed the peaks.

An aura seemed to transpire mistily from his pores to meet the aureole

that shimmered about her.

His mood was far above any thought of flirtation, or evil desire. He was

too knightly at heart to dream of adventure against her sacred

isolation. But he wished and wished that he knew her better; had known

her longer. Unconsciously he plagiarized the sigh of Johanna Ambrosius'

poem: "_Ach, haett' ich frueher dich geseh'n!_"

But Fate can play the clown as well as the tragedian, and accomplish as

much by an absurd accident as by elaborate glooms.

That afternoon, when Forbes was lured into the haberdashery, he had

invested in black silk hosiery, very sheer and very dear. Later he had

acquired a pair of new pumps. The shoes were not too small, but their

rigid edge cut his instep like a dull knife. By the time that Isolde's

husband had found her in Tristan's arms, and begun to deplore his

friend's treachery at great length, the pressure upon Forbes' heart

relaxed enough to let his feet attract his attention. They proclaimed

their discomfort acutely.

After some hesitation he resolved to slip them out of their glistening

jails a moment, under cover of the darkness.

A sense of immense relief rejoiced him when he sat with his

silk-stockinged feet perched on top of instead of inside of his shoes.

Though he was unaware of it, he was not the only one in that box to

seize the opportunity. Heaven alone knew how much empty foot-gear was

scattered along the floors of that opera-house. Persis for one had

vacated her slippers long ago. She always did at every opportunity.

Eventually she tucked her little left foot back of her and bent it round

the leg of her chair. By and by Forbes, in shifting his position,

straightened his right knee. His foot collided with a most smooth

something, and paused in a kind of surprise. Primevally our feet had as

much tactile intelligence as our hands, and Forbes' almost prehensile

big toe pondered that tiny promontory a second; then it hastily explored

the glossy surface of Persis' sole.

Silk is a facile conductor of electricity, and Persis was not divine

enough to be above ticklishness. Shudders of exquisite torment ran

through her before she could snatch her foot away. And before she could

check the impulse she snickered aloud.

And Forbes, suddenly understanding what he had done, snickered too, and

just managed to throttle down a loud guffaw.

Mrs. Neff and Winifred turned in amazement at hearing such a sound at

such a time, and the women in the next box craned their necks to inflict

a punitive glare. Which made it all the worse.

Persis and Forbes were suddenly backslidden almost to infancy. They were

like a pair of children attacked with a fit of giggles in church. The

more they wanted to be sober, the more foolish they felt. The harder

they tried to smother the laughter steaming within them, the more it

threatened to explode.

Persis would have taken to flight, but one of her slippers she could not

find, and she could not get the other on.

She and Forbes were still stuffing their handkerchiefs into their mouths

when the act ended, as the pitifully distraught Tristan permitted the

infuriated Melot to thrust him through with a sword, and fell back in

Kurwenal's arms.

Mrs. Neff and her faction did not join the ovation to the singers. They

were too busily demanding what Persis and Forbes had found to laugh at.

But neither of them would tell. It was their secret.

Willie Enslee was acutely annoyed. He had not curiosity enough to be

quick to jealousy, nor intelligence enough to suspect that Persis' and

Forbes' laughter might be, must be, due to some encounter.

Still, he had ideals of his own, such as they were, and his religion was

to avoid attracting attention. He had liked Persis because she was of

the same faith; but now she had sinned against it, and he rebuked her.

She did not flare up as usual. She laughed.

She was ashamed to have been so frivolous, ashamed to have profaned the

temple of art with her childishness. And so was Forbes. But when they

looked into each other's eyes now they no longer stared with timorous

wonderment; they smiled together in a dear and cozy intimacy. And

already they owned a secret.